Attorney General : Why We Can’t Execute Boko Haram Members Found Guilty

The Attorney General of the Federation, Mallam Abubakar Malami, has stated why convicted members of the Boko Haram sect in the country could not be executed,Speaking at the launch of amnesty’s report on Global Death Sentences and Executions 2015, in Abuja, on Wednesday.

Malami, who doubles as the Minister of Justice, said that the laws under which the insurgents were being tried did not prescribe death sentence for deadly Boko Haram member held in custody.

He said: “Terrorists in Nigeria are tried under the Terrorism Prevention Act which does not carry death penalty. That is why even those Boko Haram members, who have been convicted cannot be executed because the maximum sentence prescribed by the law is life sentence.”

The attorney-general, who was represented by Sylvester Imahanobe, also promised to work with Amnesty International to stop execution of convicted criminals in the country if the international human rights body proposed a bill to that effect.

Speaking in the same vain, the Country Director of Amnesty International, Mohammed Ibrahim, said there was a “dramatic global rise in the number of executions recorded in 2015 which saw more people put to death than at any point in the last quarter-century.”